I  BELIEVE  IN  GOD 

AND 

IN  EVOLUTION 

WILLIAM  W.  KEEN,   M.D. 


BL  263  .K43 

1922 

Keen,  William  W. 

b. 

1837. 

I  believe  in 

God 

and 

in 

evolution 

Kl'SO 


I  BELIEVE  IN  GOD 

AND 

IN    EVOLUTION 

WILLIAM  W.  KEEN,  M.D. 

EMERITUS   PROFESSOR  OF   SURGERY, 
JEFFERSON   MEDICAL   COLLEGE,    PHILADELPHIA 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LONDON 
J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT    COMPANY 


OOPTBIGHT,   1922,   BT  J.   B.   LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 


PBINtbD   BT  J.    B.   LIPPINCOTT  COMPANT 

AT  THE  WASHINGTON  SQUABE  iPRESS 

PHILADELPHIA,  V.  S.  A. 


TO  ALL  SINCERE  SEEKERS  AFTER  TRUTH; 
WHO  REVERE  THE  BIBLE  AS  THE  WORD 
OF  god;  who  revere  NATURE  AS  THE 
WORK  OF  god;  and  who  BELIEVE  THAT 
RIGHTLY  INTERPRETED  THEY  MUST 
SURELY  AGREE. 


I  BELIEVE  IN  GOD 

AND 
IN    EVOLUTION 


W.  W.  KEEN,  M.D. 


PREFACE 

I  HOPE  that  this  little  book  may 
realize  my  earnest  aspiration  as  expressed 
in  its  Dedication  and  serve  to  dispel  the 
fears  of  some  earnest  Christian  people 
that  "Science  and  the  Scriptures"  (the 
original  title  of  the  address)  are  incom- 
patible. I  find  no  difficulty  in  sincerely 
believing  in  both.  Every  year  in  a  very 
long  life,  devoted  especially  to  scientific 
teaching  and  writing  has  only  strength- 
ened my  belief  in  both. 

A  fundamental  difficulty  with  the  so- 
called  "Fundamentalists" — is  that  they 
fail  to  recognize  the  fact  that  the  "Chil- 
dren of  Israel,"  for  whom  the  Pentateuch 
was  written,  were  Orientals  and  were 
living  in  the  intellectual  childhood  of  the 
human  race.   Had  God  sent  this  message 

7 


8  PREFACE 

to  them  in  the  modern  matter-of-fact 
Occidental  form,  they  would  hardly 
have  comprehended  it,  and  might  easily 
have  rejected  it.  Their  minds  were 
cast  in  a  poetic  mold,  their  hterature  was 
permeated  with  imagery,  metaphors  and 
parables.  It  was  delivered  to  them  by 
bards,  priests  and  prophets.  No  scientists 
then  existed. 

In  this  age  of  general  education,  I  can 
hardly  believe  that  the  most  sincere  liter- 
alist  can  insist  that  while  Adam  was  made 
unconscious,  an  actual  rib  was  taken  from 
his  body  and  out  of  it  was  fashioned  a 
woman;  and  that  Eve  and  a  serpent 
actually  conversed  together  in  intelligible 
speech.  To  those  who  are  familiar  even 
in  a  general  way  with  Oriental  literature, 
all  this  is  clearly  to  be  understood  figura- 
tively and  not  literally.  So  too,  the  de- 
scription of  the  "holy  Jerusalem,"  whose 


PREFACE  9 

"light  was  like  *  *  *  unto  a  jasper  stone 
clear  as  ciystal  *  *  *  and  the  City  was  pure 
gold,  like  unto  glass  *  *  *  and  the  twelve 
gates  were  twelve  pearls,  every  several 
gate  of  one  pearl,"  etc.,  cannot  possibly 
be  understood  as  a  literal  description. 

Moreover,  as  pointed  out  by  Prof. 
Piper  in  Science  for  July  28,  1922,  if 
we  accept  the  Chronology  of  Archbishop 
Ussher,  that  the  world  was  created  in 
4004  B.C.,  and  that  Adam  and  Eve  were 
the  only  progenitors  of  the  present  races 
of  mankind,  "white,  yellow,  red,  brown 
and  black  *  *  *  the  diversity  of  their  sup- 
posed progeny  illustrates  what  the  biolo- 
gist means  by  Evolution.  The  Biblical 
Story  with  its  logical  implications  stamps 
every  believer  in  it  as  an  Evolutionist" 
(Italics  my  own.) 

But  no  scientist,  he  adds,  "will  admit  for 
a  moment  that  human  Evolution  has  pro- 


10  PBEPACE 

eeeded  as  rapidly  as  the  story  in  Genesis 
necessarily  supports"  i.e.,  that  such  enor- 
mous progress  could  possibly  have  taken 
place  in  only  6000  years — or  rather  much 
less  than  6000  years,  for  we  know  histori- 
cally that  these  variously  colored  races  of 
mankind  have  existed  for  many  centuries. 
"The  Biblical  Story  makes  Darwin's 
ideas  seem  exceedingly  conservative. 
Really,  Mr.  Bryan  [Prof.  Piper  humor- 
ously suggests]  ought  to  attack  Darwin 
as  a  hide-bound  reactionary,  instead  of  a 
radical  innovator  whose  notions  regard- 
ing the  slow  rate  of  modification  in  species 
seriously  challenge  the  truth  of  Evolu- 
tion as  taught  in  the  Bible." 

Jesus  himself  abolished  the  Old  Testa- 
ment Doctrine  "  An  Eye  for  an  Eye"  by 
his  Authoritative  Doctrine  "  But  I  say 
unto  you."  The  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews 
declares  that  the  "First  Covenant"  has 


PREFACE  11 

been  superseded  by  the  "  Second."  Both 
of  these  are  capital  instances  of  a  Spirit- 
ual Evolution. 

Yet,  doubtless,  the  "  Fundamentalists" 
of  the  day  urged  that  the  sacrosanct  "Faith 
of  our  Fathers"  and  that  the  "Faith  once 
delivered  to  the  Saints,"  should  be  upheld 
against  men  who  "  had  turned  the  world 
upside  down." 

To  me  and  to  many  another  believer  in 
Evolution,  the  Bible  is  the  Book  of  Books. 
It  is  a  precious  manual  of  Religion  but 
not  a  text-book  of  science.  It  lays  down 
rules  of  conduct.  It  is  an  inspirer  of  Chris- 
tian faith  and  hope.  It  is  the  great  revealer 
of  God  to  man  through  Jesus  Christ  His 
Son  and  our  Divine  Saviour  who  "brought 
Life  and  Immortality  to  light." 

W.  W.  Keen. 

Philadelphia, 
October,  1922. 


HISTORICAL  NOTE 

The  occasion  for  this  address  was  a  re- 
quest from  theFaculty  of  Crozer Theolog- 
ical Seminary  through  Rev.  Dr.  Milton  G. 
Evans,  the  President,  that  I  should  deliver 
the  "Commencement  Address"  on  June  6, 
1922.  No  topic  was  suggested  to  me.  I 
am,  therefore,  solely  responsible  for  choos- 
ing this  subject,  and  for  all  the  views  set 
forth  therein. 

The  request  arose  from  the  following 
facts : 

In  1867  the  Crozer  Theological  Semi- 
nary was  founded  by  the  children  of  that 
honored  Baptist,  the  late  John  P.  Crozer. 
It  is  located  at  Chester,  Pennsylvania,  on 
land  which  the  map  in  Ashmead  and 
Johnson's  History  of  Chester  shows 
belonged  to  my  ancestor  Joran  Kyn 
(George    Keen).     He    had    been    sent 

13 


14  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

from  Sweden  by  the  great  Chancellor 
Oxenstierna  in  1642,  in  the  retinue  of  John 
Printz,  the  first  governor  of  "New 
Sweden."  In  1644,  he  obtained  a  patent 
for  a  large  area  on  the  mainland  and 
founded  what  is  now  the  city  of  Chester, 
which  originally  he  called  Upland,  after 
his  native  province  in  Sweden.  William 
Penn,  on  landing  there  40  years  later, 
changed  the  name  to  Chester. 

The  first  public  office  I  haA'e  ever  held 
is  that  of  a  Charter  Trustee  of  this  Semi- 
nary. Now,  after  fifty-five  years  of  ser- 
vice, I  am  the  only  survivor  of  the  original 
Board  of  Trustees. 

Soon  after  the  publication  of  the  full 
address  in  the  Public  Ledger  of  June  11th, 
and  in  part  in  Science  for  June  9th,  the 
Messrs.  J.  B.  Lippincott  Company  re- 
quested me  to  enlarge  it  so  that  they  could 
publish  it  as  a  small  book.  The  result  is 
the  present  volume. 


I  BELIEVE  IN  GOD 

AND 
IN   EVOLUTION' 

There  are  two  views  of  the  creation  of 
man.  One  is  that  God  created  man,  com- 
pletely furnished,  physically,  mentally, 
morally  and  spiritually,  like  the  heathen 
legend  of  Minerva  springing  full-armed 
from  the  brain  of  Jupiter.  The  other  is 
that  his  creation  was  a  gradual,  instead  of 
an  instantaneous  process,  starting  from  a 
far  lower  form  of  animal  life,  slowly  in- 
creasing in  intelligence,  and  in  his  physi- 
cal, moral  and  spiritual  nature,  until  he 
reached  his  present  state.  This  exactly 
coincides  with  the  teaching  of  Evolution 
in  the  Scriptures  "first  the  blade,  then  the 

*  Commencement  address  at  Crozer  Theological  Sem- 
inary, June  6,  1922,  republished  with  much  additional 
matter.  Its  original  title  was  "Science  and  the 
Scriptures." 

15 


16  I  BELIEVE  IN  GOD 

ear,  then  the  full  corn  in  the  ear." 
(Mark,  4-28.) 

This  last  view  may  be  likened  to  the 
creation  and  development  of  the  telephone 
by  Graham  Bell,  in  our  own  day.  It  has 
been  a  gradual  evolution.  Even  to-day 
it  has  not  yet  reached  its  full  development. 
Every  day  adds  new  marvels.  Nor  has 
man  yet  reached  his  full  development. 
For  myself,  I  believe  that  man,  himself, 
will  only  attain  his  final  development  in 
the  future  life  beyond  the  grave.  In  that 
wondrous  life  I  believe  as  firmly  as  I  do 
in  my  own  present  existence. 

Do  I  also  believe  in  Evolution?  Most 
assuredly.  And  for  the  very  best  of  rea- 
sons, viz:  that  I  see  the  evidence  of  it  all 
around  me  every  day.  Even  in  my  own 
lifetime  I  have  seen  a  wonderful  evolution 
in  vegetables,  in  fruit,  in  flowers,^  in  pig- 

*  Compare  the  original  wild  rose  of  my  boyhood, 
with  its  ring  of  only  five  petals,  with  an  American 
Beauty  rose. 


AND  IN  EVOLUTION  17 

eons  and  chickens,  in  the  dog,  the  cow  and 
the  horse.  If  so  great  progress  is  possi- 
ble in  the  few  decades  of  one  human  life, 
what  is  not  possible  in  thousands  and  even 
millions  of  years,  for  the  earth  undoubted- 
ly has  existed  for  many  millions  of  years. 
The  Chronology  of  Archbishop  Ussher — 
who  lived  three  centuries  ago  (1581-1656), 
when  Paleontology,  Geology,  Anthropolo- 
gy, Philology,  Chemistry  and  the  Spectro- 
scope were  in  their  infancy,  or  even  did  not 
exist — is  a  man-made  addition  to  the  Bible 
which  has  no  business  to  be  there.  To  fix 
4004  B.C.  as  the  date  of  the  Creation  is  not 
only  untrue,  but  has  worked  immense 
harm.  Even  the  Watchman-Examiner 
(December  29,  1921) ,  quotes  the  fact  that 
copper  wire  was  made  as  early  as  5500 
B.C. — 1500  years  before  the  world  was 
created  according  to  the  Chronology  of 
Ussher.     Making  such  wire  proved  that 


18  I  BELIEVE  IN  GOD 

civilized  man  had  already  existed  for 
many,  many  years,  or  even  many  centuries. 

Dr.  Schlesinger,  the  Professor  of  As- 
tronomy at  Yale,  says  that  "many  of  the 
stars  *  *  *  are  so  distant  that  it  takes  more 
than  a  million  years  for  their  light,  [travel- 
ling at  the  rate  of  186,000  miles  a  second] 
to  reach  us,  and  it  is  probable  that  some  of 
them  may  require  five  million  years  or  even 
more."  He  adds  that  there  is  "good  evi- 
dence that  the  age  of  the  earth  must  be 
reckoned,  not  in  mere  millions,  but  in  bil- 
lions of  years." 

The  attitude  of  the  Church,  and 
especially  of  the  Clergy,  towards  science 
and  towards  the  origin  of  man  is  of  incal- 
culable importance.  Darwin's  Origin  of 
Species  was  published  in  1859,  the  year 
when  I  graduated  at  Brown  University. 
The  recrudescence  of  the  warfare  over 
Evolution,  which  for  many  years  had  sub- 


AND  IN  EVOLUTION  19 

sided  and  almost  disappeared,  except  spo- 
radically, is  a  strange  and  surely  only 
a  passing  phenomenon.  The  illogical 
and  futile  attacks  upon  science  by 
some  of  the  miscalled  Fundamentalists, 
and  an  illogical  and  even  absurd  attempt 
to  prove  that  the  Bible  contains  and  antic- 
ipated the  discoveries  of  modern  science, 
are  doing  immense  harm  to  religion.  There 
is  serious  danger,  if  present  tendencies 
triumph,  that  intelligent  people — ^those 
who  eventually  mold  the  thought  of  the 
world — will  be  alienated  from  the  Church 
and  finally  driven  out  of  it.  It  is  not  with- 
out deplorable  significance  that  Lord 
Bryce,  in  his  Modern  Democracies,  (II, 
326)  states  that  in  Argentina  and  Brazil, 
"Men  of  the  educated  class  have  practi- 
cally dropped  Christianity." 

The  Bible  is  a  text-book  of  Religion  and 
not  a  text-book  of  Science.  Like  our  com- 


20  I  BELIEVE  IN  GOD 

mon  speech  of  to-day,  its  language  is  pop- 
ular, not  technical.  Sage  and  wayfaring 
man  alike  find  in  it  guidance  and  comfort 
in  this  mortal  life,  and  the  Gospel,  the  good 
news  of  an  Immortal  Life  through  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ.  The  "Impregnable 
Rock  of  Holy  Scripture"  and  the  impreg- 
nable rocks  of  the  geologist  are  equally 
God's  handiwork,  and  rightly  interpreted 
must  agree. 

Mr.  Bryan  and  many  others,  especially 
the  so-called  Fundamentalists,  confuse 
Evolution  with  Darwinism.  They  believe 
them  to  be  identical.  On  the  contrary, 
Evolution  long  antedated  Darwinism.  I 
cannot  state  the  distinction  between  them 
better  than  in  the  words  of  Prof.  James  H. 
Robinson  {Science,  July  28,  1922,  p.  95) 
as  follows : 

"Recently  a  serious  misunderstanding 
has  resulted  from  the  report  that  men  of 


AND  IN  EVOLUTION  21 

science  are  giving  up  'Darwinism,'  that 
'Darwinism  is  dead.'  This  has  puzzled 
those  who  supposed  that  Evolution  was  a 
well-substantiated  assumption,  and  has 
filled  with  a  somewhat  malicious  joy  those 
who  have  always  denounced  the  notion  as 
wicked  and  opposed  to  Scripture. 

"But  to  the  biologist,  Darwinism  does 
not  mean  the  theory  of  man's  animal  de- 
scent, which  was  formulated  long  before 
the  publication  of  the  Origin  of  Species, 
but  is  confined  to  the  ingenious  theories 
which  Darwin  so  patiently  worked  out  to 
account  for  the  facts  of  Evolution.  The 
statement  that  Darwinism  is  dead  does 
not  mean  that  the  evidence  for  the  evolu- 
tionary hypothesis  has  in  any  way  been 
weakened  so  that  any  reaUy  competent 
man  of  science  doubts  our  animal  deriva- 
tion. It  only  means  Darwin's  explana- 
tions of  how  one  species  may  have  been 


22  I  BELIEVE  IN  GOD 

derived  from  another,  has  proved,  as  a 
result  of  increasing  knowledge,  to  be  mis- 
taken or  wholly  inadequate." 

Or  again  in  the  words  of  Prof.  H.  E. 
Walter,  of  Brown  "as  the  analysis  of  the 
living  world,  gradually  came  to  shift  from 
species  to  individuals  it  was  shown  that 
individuals  may  be  regarded  as  simply 
aggregates  of  unit  characters  which  may 
combine  so  variously  that  it  becomes  more 
and  more  difficult  to  maintain  constant 
barriers  of  any  kind  between  the  groups 
of  individuals  arbitrarily  called  'species'." 

Batesonhimself ,  who  has  been  misquoted 
as  an  opponent  of  Evolution,  says :  "Let  us 
proclaim  in  precise  and  unmistakable  lan- 
guage that  our  faith  in  Evolution  is  un- 
shaken. Every  available  line  .of  argument 
converges  on  this  inevitable  conclusion." 

I  propose  in  this  address  to  approach 
Evolution  not  from  the  controversial  side. 


AND  IN  EVOLUTION  23 

or  from  general  arguments,  but  from  a 
plain  statement  of  a  series  of  specific  facts, 
many  of  them  drawn  from  my  personal 
experience  as  a  surgeon  and  anatomist — 
facts  which,  to  my  mind,  absolutely  de- 
monstrate the  solidarity  of  animal  life, 
more  especially  in  the  case  of  the  verte- 
brates, such  as  fish,  birds,  other  mammals 
and  man,  the  highest  mammal. 

Plant  life  I  shall  consider  later.  (See 
page  89.) 

Many  opponents  of  Evolution  admit 
the  gradual  development  of  animal  life 
from  its  lowest  form  up  to  and  including 
the  anthropoid  apes,  but  they  draw  the  line 
there,  basing  this  belief  on  the  account  in 
Genesis.  Man,  they  insist,  stands  as  a 
separate  direct  creation  by  the  Almighty, 
"out  of  the  dust  of  the  ground."  Such  an 
argument  is  like  declaring  that  the  laws  of 
mathematics  reign  in  numbers  up  to  say, 


M  I  BELIEVE  IN  GOD 

100,000  or  1,000,000,  but  beyond  that  limit 
are  no  longer  valid. 

I  have  been  a  student  and  teacher  of 
Anatomy  and  Surgery  since  1860,  a  period 
of  sixty-two  years.  I  have  diligently 
striven  to  know  these  two  subjects  as 
thoroughly  as  possible,  and  have  written 
hundreds  of  papers  and  some  books,  in 
which  I  have  set  forth  this  knowledge. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  am  a  firm  believer 
in  Christianity.  I  follow,  very  falter- 
ingly,  it  is  true,  in  the  footsteps  of  my 
beloved  Master,  and  adore  Him  as  my 
Divine  Saviour.  In  Him  are  all  my  hopes 
for  the  future.  As  a  Christian  man,  I  find 
no  difficulty  whatever  in  believing  abso- 
lutely in  Evolution,  and  also  absolutely 
in  Revelation. 

Let  me  now  point  to  facts — not  theories, 
but  facts — which  demonstrate  this  unity  of 
the  animal  kingdom,  including  man. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB  PAGB 

I.  Operations  on  the  Brain 27 

II.  Human  and  Animal  Skeletons 37 

III.  The  Heart 41 

IV.  Liver  and  Ductless  Glands 45 

V.  Thyroid  Gland 47 

VI.  Sympathetic  System 49 

VII.  Rudimentary  Organs 57 

VIII.  Identical  Diseases 59 

IX.  Cellular  Origin  of  Life 65 

X.  Embryonic  Deformities 71 

XI.  Heredity 75 

XII.  Influence  of  Emotions 77 

XIII.  Evidence  from  Fossil  Man 85 

XIV.  The  Message  of  Plants 89 

XV.  Evolution  of  Culture  and  Civilization 95 


25 


I  BELIEVE  IN  GOD 

AND 

IN  EVOLUTION 
I. 

OPERATIONS  ON  THE  BRAIN 

I.  Let  me  relate  some  operations  I  have 
done  on  the  human  brain.  The  brain  in 
animals,  including  man,  consists  in  a  gen- 
eral way  of —  (a)  The  Cerebrum;  (b)  The 
Cerebellum;  (c)  The  Spinal  Cord;  and 
(d)  certain  structures  which  bind  these 
three  together.  Extend  the  fingers 
straight  forward.  The  fingers  then  resem- 
ble the  "convolutions"  on  the  surface  of 
the  brain;  the  furrows  between  them 
resemble  the  "fissures"  between  the  con- 
volutions of  the  brain.  The  convolutions, 
however,  are  more  or  less  curved,  instead 

27 


28  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

of  being  straight  as  are  the  fingers.  Every 
cook  knows  the  appearance  of  the  brain. 
The  principal  fissures  between  the  convo- 
lutions are  similar  in  man  and  animals. 

In  the  convolutions  on  the  surface  of  the 
brain  are  certain  small  aggregations  of 
microscopic  motor  nerve  ceils  in  the  gray 
matter  called  "motor  centers."  On  being 
stimulated  by  an  electric  current,  these 
cells  produce  motion,  each  center  in  one 
definite  portion  of  the  body,  and  never  in 
any  other  part. 

These  motor  centers  are  all  grouped 
around  the  fissure  of  Rolando,  which  runs 
obliquely  downward  and  forward  above 
the  ear.  (Fig.  1.)  This,  and  another 
deep  furrow  called  the  fissure  of  Syhdus, 
are  always  readily  identified  in  the  lower 
animals.  The  motor  centers  for  move- 
ments of  the  leg,  arm,  face,  fingers,  etc., 
in  the  brains  of  the  lower  animals,  up  to 


OPERATIONS  ON  THE  BRAIN        29 

the  anthropoid  apes,  have  been  exactly 
mapped  out  by  experiments  on  animals. 
In  the  human  brain  the  location  of  the  cor- 

FISSURE  OFROIAWDO 
LARGE  ARTERY 


A 

Fig.  1. — Show3  the  location  of  the  Fissure  of  Rolando,  the  location  of 
the  areas  in  which  the  "motor  centers"  for  the  leg,  arm  (including  those  for 
the  hand)  and  the  face  are  situated.  Also  the  position  of  the  large  artery 
which  was  torn  in  the  case  of  the  Annapolis  Midshipman. 

responding  motor  centers  is  a  duplicate  of 
those  in  the  brains  of  animals.  Let  me 
relate  some  striking  cases  to  confirm 
this  statement. 

A  young  woman  with  epilepsy,  whose 
attacks  were  constantly  increasing  in  f re- 


30  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

quency  and  violence,  insisted  that  her  at- 
tacks always  began  in  her  left  thumb,  then 
spread  to  the  hand,  then  to  the  arm,  fol- 
lowed by  unconsciousness  and  violent  con- 
vulsions all  over  the  body.  Careful 
observation  for  two  weeks  in  hospital 
confirmed  her  statements  that  the  fits 
always  did  begin  in  her  left  thumb. 
If,  then,  I  could  prevent  the  fit  from 
beginning  in  this  thumb,  so  I  reasoned, 
it  might  be  that  I  could  prevent  the 
entire  attack.  Just  as,  in  a  row  of  bricks 
standing  on  end,  if  I  can  prevent  the  first 
one  from  falling,  none  of  the  others 
will  fall. 

The  possibility  of  the  exact  localization 
of  the  little  cube  of  gray  matter  on  the  sur- 
face of  the  brain,  dominating  all  the  mus- 
cles of  the  thumb,  was  the  key  to  the  whole 
operation.  This  localization  of  the  thumb 
center  had  been  fixed  absolutely  by  experi- 


OPERATIONS  ON  THE  BRAIN        31 

ments  on  the  brains  of  animals.  Accord- 
ingly, I  opened  her  skull,  identified  the 
spot  corresponding  to  the  thumb  center 
in  animals,  {Le,,  the  great  toe  of  the  front 
foot)  and  cut  out  a  small  cube  less  than  an 
inch  on  each  side. 

Next,  note  the  fact  that  there  are  nine 
muscles  moving  the  thumb,  some  in  the  ball 
of  the  thumb,  some  between  the  thumb 
and  the  forefinger,  some  extending  up  the 
front  of  the  forearm,  and  some  up  the  back 
of  the  forearm,  both  of  the  latter  reaching 
nearly  to  the  elbow.  Some  flex  and  some 
extend  the  thumb,  some  separate  it  from 
the  other  fingers,  and  by  one  we  can  make 
the  thumb  touch  each  of  the  other  four 
fingers.  This  is  the  motion  which  differ- 
entiates the  human  "hand"  from  the  ani- 
mal fore  "foot." 

When  this  patient  awoke  from  the  ether, 
every  one  of  these  nine  muscles  was  para- 


32  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

lyzed  and  in  not  a  single  additional  muscle 
was  motion  abolished  1  The  human  brain 
center  and  the  animal  brain  center  for  the 
thumb  were  proved  to  be  precisely  identi- 
cal. My  hopes  were  justified.  Her  epi- 
leptic attacks,  which  had  occurred  almost 
daily,  recurred  only  about  once  in  a  year. 
In  a  few  months  she  even  regained  full 
control  over  this  thumb. 

Two  other  later  similar  cases  still 
further  confirmed  this  wonderfully  exact 
localization. 

A  fourth  brain  case:  In  1888  I  report- 
ed my  first  three  cases  of  modern  surgery 
of  the  brain.  Attending  the  meeting  of 
the  American  Surgical  Association  in 
Washington,  when  I  read  this  paper,  was 
Sir  David  Terrier,  of  London.  He  had 
contributed  very  largely  to  this  then 
wholly  new  mapping  of  the  brain  centers 
controlling  motion.      In  one  case  I  de- 


OPERATIONS  ON  THE  BRAJN        33 

scribed  how,  by  the  battery,^  I  had 
stimulated  a  certain  small,  definite  motor 
area  in  the  brain  of  my  patient,  the  loca- 
tion of  which  had  been  also  determined  by 
experiments  on  the  brain  of  animals,  and 
described  the  resulting  movements  of  the 
arm  at  the  shoulder.  Terrier  afterwards 
said  to  me,  "I  could  hardly  restrain  myself 
from  leaping  to  my  feet,  for  this  was  the 
very  first  demonstration  on  the  human 
brain  of  the  exact  identity  of  my  own  local- 
ization of  this  very  center  in  animals." 

A  fifth  brain  case:  A  midshipman  in 
the  United  States  Naval  Academy  at 
Annapolis,  in  1902.  I  saw  him  three 
days  after  his  accident.  All  the  history  I 
obtained  was  that  he  had  been  injured  in 
a  football  game,  had  been  unconscious  for 
half  an  hour,  and  since  then  had  com- 
plained  bitterly   of  headache,   which   he 

*The  brain  itself  is  wholly  devoid  of  sensation  and 
can  feel  no  pain. 

3 


34  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

located  in  his  forehead.  He  was  almost 
comatose,  his  pulse  was  only  52.  There 
was  no  fracture  of  the  skull.  Soon  after 
the  accident,  he  developed  local  convul- 
sions— note  this  carefully — first  in  the 
right  leg  and  later  and  chiefly  in  the  right 
arm,  but  never  involving  the  face.  In  six 
and  a  half  hours  he  had  had  twenty-four 
of  these  convulsions,  all  ill  the  right  arm. 
The  only  local  evidence  of  any  injury  was 
a  slight  bruise  at  the  outer  end  of  the  left 
eyebrow.  Had  I  seen  this  case  prior  to 
1885 — when  I  first  made  a  careful  study 
of  the  motor  centers  in  the  brain — I  should 
have  followed,  of  course,  the  only  visible 
indication  of  the  location  of  the  injury  to 
the  brain,  namely,  the  bruise.  Had  I 
opened  his  skull  near  the  bruise,  I  should 
have  been  confronted  with  a  perfectly  nor- 
mal brain.  I  should  then  have  been  com- 
pelled to  close  the  wound  and  perforce 


OPERATIONS  ON  THE  BRAIN        35 

have  done  nothing  more.  He  would  have 
died  within  two  or  three  days. 

But  experiments  on  animals,  had  shown 
that  above  the  ear  and  a  little  in  front  of 
it,  lay  the  centers  controlling  the  muscles 
of  the  face,  the  arm,  and  the  leg,  from 
below  upwards,  the  leg  center  being  near 
the  top  of  the  head.    Fig.  1. 

As  there  was  no  fracture  of  the  skull, 
and  as  the  convulsions  began  first  in  the 
leg  and  then  concentrated  chiefly  in  the 
arm,  but  never  extended  to  the  face,  my 
diagnosis  was  a  rupture  of  the  large  artery 
on  the  surface  of  the  brain  over  these  motor 
centers;  that  the  escaping  blood  had 
formed  a  clot,  the  edge  of  which  first 
overlapped  the  leg  center,  but  that  the 
chief  mass  of  the  clot  lay  over  the  arm 
center.  Moreover,  I  felt  sure  that  it  had 
not  yet  reached  downwards  over  the  motor 
center  controlling  the  muscles  of  the  face. 


36  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

Evidently,  this  clot  must  be  immediately 
removed  or  he  would  quickly  die.  I 
opened  his  skull  directly  over  the  center 
for  the  arm  muscles,  and  far  av/ay  from 
the  bruise.  The  opening  in  the  skull  at 
once  disclosed  the  clot,  the  thickest  part  of 
which  did  lie  exactly  over  the  arm  center, 
as  I  had  foretold.  I  removed  three-quar- 
ters of  a  tumblerful  of  blood,  which  had 
caused  the  headache,  the  somnolence,  the 
slow  pulse  and  the  convulsions ;  then  tied 
the  artery,  and  closed  the  wound.  He 
made  an  uninterrupted  recovery.  He 
entered  the  Na\y,  but  some  years  later 
lost  his  noble  life  in  saving  his  ship  and  the 
crew  from  destruction  by  a  fire  near  the 
powder  magazine. 

Do  not  such  exact  localizations  of  the 
brain  centers  in  animals,  as  directly  ap- 
plied to  man,  in  hundreds,  if  not  thousands 
of  operations  by  now,  most  closely  ally 
man  to  animals? 


II. 

HUMAN  AND  ANIMAL 
SKELETONS 

11.  Go  with  me  next  into  the  Museum 
of  the  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences  in 
Philadelphia,  and  compare  the  skeleton  of 
man  with  those  of  the  lower  animals. 
Practically,  these  animal  skeletons  all 
closely  resemble  the  human  skeleton, 
though  when  clothed  with  flesh  and  skin 
they  look  very  unlike. 

All  of  the  ape  and  the  monkey  skeletons 
are  practically  replicas  of  the  human 
skeleton. 

Look  at  the  many  skeletons  with  five 
toes — the  prevalent  or  typical  number — 
such  as  those  of  the  cat,  tiger,  bear,  ele- 
phant,  etc.^     Observe,   for  instance   the 

*  Sometimes  in  the  hind  leg  there  are  only  four  toes, 
or  the  fifth,  if  it  exists,  is  rudimentary. 

37 


38  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

front  and  hind  legs  that  correspond  to  the 
arm  and  leg  in  man.  Bone  for  bone,  they 
are  counterparts  of  the  human  skeleton — 
shoulderblade,  humerus,  radius  and  ulna 
(the  two  bones  of  the  forearm) ,  and  those 
of  the  hand ;  with  a  similar  correspondence 
in  the  bones  of  the  hind  leg  and  human  leg. 
Nothing  could  be  more  unlike  exter- 
nally than  the  flipper  of 
a  whale  and  the  arm  and 
hand  of  a  man.  Yet  you 
find  in  the  flipper  the 
shoulderblade,  humerus, 
radius,  ulna,  and  a  hand 
with  the  bones  of  four 
fingers  masked  in  a  mit- 
ten of  skin.  (Fig.  2.) 
Observe  the  bones  of 
the  next  chicken  you  eat.  The  breast  bone 
of  all  birds  has  a  great  ridge  developed  to 
give  a  large  surface  for  attachment  of  the 


Fig.  2.— The  bones  of  the 
arm  are  masked  within  the 
skin  of  the  whale  flipper. 


HUMAN  AND  ANIMAL  SKELETONS  39 

large  and  powerful  breast  muscles  for 
flight.  You  will  find  in  the  wing  the  coun- 
terpart of  the  shoulderblade,  the  humerus, 
and  the  radius  and  ulna.  The  terminal 
bones  of  the  bird's  wing,  i.e.,  the  hand,  are 
only  three  in  number,  the  bones  corre- 
sponding to  the  little  finger  and  the  ring 
finger  being  absent.  They  are  thus  modi- 
fied to  support  the  feathers.  It  is  a  hand 
altered  to  suit  the  medium  in  which  birds 
move  so  gracefully. 

While  undoubted  evidence  shows  that 
man  has  existed  for  only  about  500,000 
years,  the  horse  has  a  consecutive  geolog- 
ical history  of  over  3,000,000  years.  The 
skeleton  of  the  earliest  horse,  which  was 
scarcely  larger  than  a  cat,  had  four  toes 
in  front  and  three  behind.  Gradually,  all 
the  toe  bones  except  one — the  middle  toe 
— have  been  lost.  But  the  second  and 
fourth  digits,  though  they  do  not  show 


40  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

externally,  are  represented  by  two  rudi- 
mentary bones,  the  two  "splint  bones." 


FiQ.  S. — ^The  skeleton  of  a  horse  and  a  human  skeleton  compared. 

The  horse  of  to-day  walks  literally  on  tip 
toe,  for  the  hoof  is  the  toe-  or  finger-nail. 
(Fig.  3.) 


III. 

THE  HEART 
III.  The  internal  organs  of  the  body 
have  the  same  story  to  tell  of  likeness  or 
identity.  Let  us  first  look  at  the  heart. 
You  all  know  there  is  a  right  side  of  the 
heart  which  sends  the  blood  through  the 
lungs  to  be  oxygenated,  and  a  left  side, 
which  sends  the  blood  to  all  the  rest  of  the 
body.  Each  of  these  sides  has  two  cavi- 
ties— the  auricle  to  collect  the  blood,  the 
other,  the  ventricle,  with  strong  muscular 
walls,  to  drive  the  blood  on  its  long  jour- 
ney. These  four  cavities  are  all  united 
into  one  heart,  with  an  important  groove 
on  the  surface,  marking  a  partition 
between  the  two  auricles  above  and  the  two 
ventricles  below.^ 


^Get   a  bullock's  heart   at  market  and  note   these 
facts. 

41 


42  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

A  steady,  rythmical  action  of  the  four 
cavities  is  essential  for  the  proper  propul- 
sion of  the  blood,  and,  therefore,  for  health 
and  life.  The  four  cavities  act,  not  all  at 
once,  but  in  succession,  like  the  feet  of  a 
walking  horse — 1,  2,  3,  4;  1,  2,  3,  4,  each 
foot  having  its  own  number.  Until  1892 
we  did  not  know  exactly  what  regulated 
this  orderly  sequence.  In  that  year,  the 
younger  Doctor  His  discovered  that  in  the 
groove  between  the  auricles  and  the  ven- 
tricles there  is  a  small  bundle  of  muscular 
fibers  which  exists  as  one  bundle  until  it 
reaches  a  certain  point.  There  it  divides 
into  two  smaller  bundles,  one  going  to  the 
muscles  of  the  right  side  of  the  heart,  and 
the  other  to  those  of  the  left  side. 

But  the  great  importance  of  this  "bundle 
of  His"  was  not  fully  appreciated  until 
twelve  years  later  (1904).  If,  under  an 
anesthetic,  an  animal's  chest  is  opened,  the 


THE  HEART  43 

heart  laid  bare,  and  this  "bundle  of  His" 
is  injured,  the  rhythm  of  the  successive 
contracting  of  the  walls  of  the  four  cavities 
of  the  heart  is  at  once  disturbed.  Instead 
of  1,  2,  3,  4,  the  order  might  be  1,  4,  2,  3,  or 
1,  3,  2,  4,  etc.  This  fluttering  of  the  heart 
threatens  life.  If  the  bundle  is  destroyed, 
death  quickly  follows. 

In  man,  such  physiological  experiments, 
of  course,  are  forbidden,  but  occasionally 
disease  maims  or  destroys  this  bundle  of 
His  in  the  human  heart  itself.  A  small 
tumor  named  a  gumma,  in  a  few  cases,  has 
formed  directly  in  or  near  the  bundle  of 
His,  and  in  some  cases  has  destroyed  it. 
This  has  deranged  the  action  of  the  heart 
of  the  human  patient,  just  as  the  physiol- 
ogist did  in  the  experimental  animal.  Se- 
vere flutterings  of  the  human  heart,  with 
difficulty  of  breathing,  a  pulse  slowed 
down  from  72  to  20,  10,  or  even  5  in  the 


44  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

minute  were  observed.  Not  seldom  sud- 
den death  occurred.  The  post-mortem  in 
these  cases  disclosed  the  tumor,  or  other 
cause,  which  had  injured  or  destroyed  this 
bundle  of  His,  and  was  the  immediate 
cause  of  death. 

Now,  this  bundle  of  His  is  found  in  all 
vertebrates,  in  man  and  other  mammals,  in 
birds,  and  even  in  frogs  and  fishes.  This 
certainly  shows  the  solidarity  of  the  entire 
animal  kingdom.  Such  exact  parallels  be- 
tween the  human  and  the  animal  body 
strongly  suggest,  one  may  even  say  prove, 
a  close  interrelation  of  the  two. 


IV. 

LIVER  AND  DUCTLESS 
GLANDS 

IV.  The  Liver  and  the  Ductless  or 
"Endocrine"  Glands.  Everybody  knows 
that  the  liver  secretes  bile,  or  gall.  The 
bile,  which  is  necessary  for  proper  diges- 
tion, is  discharged  into  the  intestines 
through  a  tube  called  the  bile  duct.  The 
gall  bladder  is  simply  a  reservoir  for  extra 
bile,  and  a  sturdy  means  of  support  for  us 
surgeons,  especially  in  the  late  hard  times, 
by  reason  of  the  dangerous  gall  stones 
which  form  in  it  and  require  removal  by 
a  surgical  operation. 

Now,  in  1848,  Claude  Bernard  of  Paris, 
one  of  my  own  teachers  in  the  middle  60 's, 
discovered  that  the  liver  had  a  second  func- 
tion totally  unsuspected  until  then.  Prac- 
tically all  the  blood  from  the  intestines  goes 
through  the  liver  on  its  way  back  to  the 

45 


46  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

heart.  Bernard  opened  the  abdomen  of 
a  fasting  animal,  drew  some  of  the  blood 
before  it  entered  the  liver,  and  also  some 
of  the  blood  after  it  had  gone  through  the 
liver.  He  found  that  the  blood,  before  it 
entered  the  liver,  was  sugar  free,  but  after 
it  emerged  from  the  liver,  it  always  con- 
tained sugar.  This  was  the  first  step  in 
the  scientific  study  of  diabetes,  in  which 
there  is  an  excess  of  sugar  which  is  ex- 
creted through  the  kidneys. 

But  the  liver  has  no  second  duct  or  tube 
for  the  discharge  of  this  sugar  into  the 
blood  current.  Being  in  solution,  the  su- 
gar soaks  through  the  thin  walls  of  the 
blood  vessels  into  the  blood  current  as  it 
passes  through  the  liver. 

Following  this  came  later  the  discovery 
of  the  now  numerous  "ductless  glands" 
of  which  we  have  learned  so  much  chiefly 
by  animal  experimentation  in  the  last  few 
years.  Some  of  them,  though  only  as 
large  as  a  pea,  are  essential  to  life  itself. 


V. 
THYROID  GLAND 

V.  Let  me  now  say  a  few  words  about 
one  of  the  most  important  of  these  "duct- 
less glands" — the  Thyroid  Gland  in  the 
neck.  When  it  becomes  enlarged  it  is 
familiar  to  us  as  a  "goiter," 

From  this  gland,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
liver,  there  soaks  into  the  blood  stream  cir- 
culating through  the  thyroid,  a  secretion 
of  great  importance  to  life.  If  the  gland 
is  rudimentary,  either  in  substance  or  in 
function,  it  results  in  that  form  of  idiocy 
known  as  cretinism.  As  a  remedy  we  have 
learned  to  administer  an  extract  from  the 
thyroid  glands  of  animals.  The  remedy 
is  usually  remarkably  successful.  In  cer- 
tain conditions,  goiter  is  very  prevalent  in 
the  thyroid  gland  of  brook  trout.     It  has 

47 


48  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

even  threatened  to  destroy  the  culture  of 
these  food  fishes  (Kimball,  American 
Journal  of  the  Medical  Sciences,  May, 
1922,  p.  634).  By  the  administration  of 
iodin,  this  disease  has  been  prevented  in 
the  trout.  As  a  result  of  this  success  the 
same  method  has  been  tried  and  found  effi- 
cient in  preventing  goiter  in  human  beings. 
Here,  again,  you  perceive  the  solidarity 
of  the  animal  kingdom  in  such  identity  of 
function  that  the  thyroid  gland  of  animals, 
when  given  as  a  remedy  to  man,  performs 
precisely  the  same  function  as  the  human 
thyroid.  Moreover,  it  is  not  the  thyroid 
gland  from  the  anthropoid  apes  that  is 
used  as  a  remedy,  but  that  from  the  more 
lowly  sheep. 


VI. 
SYMPATHETIC  SYSTEM 

VI.  The  Sympathetic  Nerve  and  its 
wonderful  phenomena.  When  I  was  a 
student  of  medicine  one  of  our  text-books 
was  Dalton's  Physiology.  In  connection 
with  the  sympathetic  nerve,  there  was  a 
picture  of  a  cat,  of  which  the  "Chessy  cat" 
of  Alice  in  Wonderland  ahvays  reminds 
me,  for  in  both  only  the  face  was  pictured. 

The  sympathetic  nerve  in  the  neck  is  a 
slender  cord  about  as  thick  as  a  fairly 
stout  needle.  It  runs  vertically  on  each 
side  of  the  neck,  alongside  of  the  carotid 
artery  and  the  jugular  vein,  and  so  close 
to  them  that  a  dagger-,  a  knife-  or  a 
bayonet-thrust,  or  a  bullet,  which  would 
cut  the  nerve,  would  almost  surely  cut  the 

4  49 


50  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

great  artery  and  the  vein.  The  patient 
then  would  bleed  to  death  in  a  few  min- 
utes and  never  reach  a  hospital.  Hence, 
no  one  had  ever  had  a  chance  to  observe 
the  effects  following  division  of  this  nerve 
in  man.  Before  Brown- Sequard's  ex- 
periment on  animals,  in  1852,  its  function, 
therefore,  was  entirely  unknown.  By  a 
small  incision  he  exposed  the  nerve  in  the 
neck  of  a  cat,  rabbit  and  other  animals, 
divided  the  nerve,  and  observed  what  hap- 
pened. The  small  wound  healed  quickly. 
These  results  were  as  follows :  1.  The 
pupil  of  the  eye  on  the  same  side  as  the 
cut  nerve  diminished  from  the  normal 
large  sized  pupil  in  the  cat  to  almost  the 
size  of  a  pin  hole.  2.  The  correspond- 
ing ear  became  redder  from  a  greatly  in- 
creased flow  of  blood,  i,e,,  the  blood  ves- 
sels were  greatly  dilated.  3.  On  that  side 
there  was  increased  sweating,  that  is,  the 


SYMPATHETIC  SYSTEM  51 

sweat  glands  became  very  active  as  a  result 
of  the  greater  blood  supply.  4.  The  tem- 
perature increased  to  a  marked  degree ;  in 
rabbits,  by  seven  to  over  eleven  degrees 
Fahrenheit. 

Dalton's  picture  of  the  cat's  face  could 
never  be  forgotten,  because  the  two  pupils 
differed  so  greatly  in  size. 

In  1863,  during  the  Civil  War,  when  I 
was  Assistant  Executive  Officer  of  a  mili- 
tary hospital,  one  day  a  new  patient  ap- ) 
proached  my  desk  just  as  I  was  about  to 
sign  a  letter.  The  moment  I  looked  up  at 
him  I  was  struck  with  his  appearance  and 
instantly  said  to  myself,  "Surely  you  are 
Dalton's  cat."  "Where  were  you  wound- 
ed?" I  quickly  asked.  He  pointed  to  his 
neck,  and  I  said  to  myself,  "His  sympathe- 
tic nerve  must  have  been  cut."  Further 
careful  observation  showed  the  reddened 
ear,  the  increased  temperature,  the  sweat- 


52  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

ing  and  the  greater  flow  of  saliva,  thus  con- 
firming in  every  particular  the  results  of 
Brown- Sequard's  experiments  on  animals. 
It  is  interesting  to  know  that  this  was  the 
very  first  case  in  surgical  history  in  which 
the  effects  of  cutting  the  sympathetic 
nerve  had  ever  been  observed  in  man. 

Further  experiments  on  this  little  nerve 
in  animals  revealed  a  wholly  new  world  of 
most  important  phenomena.  It  was  dis- 
covered that  the  sympathetic  nerve  sent 
branches  to  every  artery  in  the  body,  from 
head  to  foot.  Now  the  arteries  are  tubes, 
like  the  water  pipes  in  a  house,  not,  of 
course,  rigid  like  metal,  but  soft  and  flexi- 
ble, for  they  consist  largely  of  muscular 
fibers  which  contract  or  relax  automati- 
cally, making  the  arterial  tubes  of  a  larger 
or  a  smaller  diameter  according  to  the  need 
for  more  or  less  blood. 

For  instance,  just  before  a  meal,  the 


SYMPATHETIC  SYSTEM  53 

stomach  is  of  a  dirty  yellowish-brown 
color.  Not  a  single  blood  vessel  is  to 
be  seen.  An  hour  after  the  meal  the 
stomach  has  become  so  red  that  it  looks 
ahnost  as  if  the  wall  of  the  stomach  was 
made  up  of  nothing  but  blood  vessels.  This 
greatly  increased  supply  of  blood  is  needed 
to  secrete  gastric  juice  for  the  digestion  of 
our  food,  and  for  the  active  churning  move- 
ments of  the  stomach  during  the  process 
of  digestion.  As  the  food  is  digested,  less 
and  less  blood  is  needed,  and,  under  the 
influence  of  the  sympathetic  nerve,  the  cali- 
ber of  the  arteries  is  gradually  diminished 
by  the  contraction  of  their  muscular  walls, 
until  the  stomach  looks  as  bloodless  as 
before  the  meal. 

How  fortunate  that  all  this  is  automatic ! 
Were  it  not,  and  after  breakfast  you 
forgot  to  order  an  increasing  supply  of 
blood  for  digestion,  or  if  after  digestion 


54  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

was  accomplished,  you  forgot  to  shut  off 
the  blood,  what  would  become  of  you? 

The  iris,  the  colored  circular  curtain  in- 
side the  eye,  with  a  round,  black  hole  in 
the  centre  called  the  pupil,  is  under  similar 
automatic  control  of  this  sympathetic 
nerve.  The  iris  is  like  a  wheel.  Around 
the  pupil  there  are  circular  fibers  which 
one  may  call  the  hub,  while  the  rest  of  the 
iris  consists  of  radiating  fibers  correspond- 
ing to  the  spokes.  When  you  go  out  of 
doors,  the  bright  light  at  first  almost  blinds 
you,  but  very  quickly  the  circular  fibers 
around  the  pupil  contract  so  that  the  pupil 
becomes  as  small  as  a  pin  hole  and  protects 
the  retina.  On  going  into  a  dark  room, 
at  first  you  stumble  over  the  furniture,  but 
in  a  few  moments  the  radiating  fibers  pull 
the  pupil  wide  open  and  you  see  clearly 
everything  in  the  room. 

The  chief  center   of  the   sympathetic 


SYMPATHETIC  SYSTEM  55 

system  of  nerves  is  at  the  familiar  "solar 
plexus,"  which  lies  in  front  of  the  spine  at 
the  level  of  the  "pit  of  the  stomach." 

When  you  blush  from  emotion,  the  ar- 
teries of  your  skin  have  dilated.  When 
you  turn  pale  with  fright,  the  caliber  of 
your  arteries  is  lessened,  and  if  the  arteries 
going  to  your  brain  supply  too  little  blood, 
you  fall  in  a  faint.  When  you  cut  your 
hand,  you  know  how  all  around  the  cut  the 
redness  shows  that  the  arteries  have  dilated 
to  furnish  extra  blood  for  the  repair  of  the 
injury,  and  when  the  wound  is  healed,  your 
bloodvessels  again  gradually  contract,  and 
the  redness  disappears. 

All  these  processes  also  are  automatic. 
You  do  not  have  to  remember  to  order 
blood  to  or  from  a  cut  hand,  or  to  contract 
or  widen  the  pupil,  etc.  It  is  all  done  for 
you;  in  fact  it  is  done  in  spite  of  you,  for 
you  have  no  control  over  these  varying  con- 


56  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

ditions.^  The  automatic  action  of  this 
nerve  is  of  the  utmost  importance  for  many- 
functions  involving  life  itself. 

I  could  go  on  almost  indefinitely  with  a 
multitude  of  similar  illustrations.  All  of 
our  knowledge  of  these  facts  started  from 
Brown- Sequard's  little  experiment  of  cut- 
ting the  slender  sympathetic  nerve  in  the 
neck  of  an  animal. 

^  This  is  not  strictly  true.  In  certain  circumstances, 
by  many  repeated  efforts,  one  can  slowly  gain  some 
control  over  these  emotional  effects,  but  not  over  the 
necessary  physiological  reactions  such  as  the  pupil,  etc. 


VII. 
RUDIMENTARY  ORGANS 

VII.  Another  evidence  of  our  animal 
origin  is  found  in  organs  which  are  well 
developed  and  actively  functioning  in  some 
of  the  lower  animals,  but  which  in  man  are 
only  rudimentary.  The  horse  can  get  rid 
of  flies  by  active  wriggling  movement  of 
his  skin,  a  faculty  lost  in  man.  He  can 
also  turn  his  ears  to  and  fro;  not  a  few 
human  beings  have  preserved  this  func- 
tion but  to  a  much  less  degree  than  the 
horse.  The  best  known  example  of  a 
rudimentary  organ  is  the  appendix,  which, 
in  some  of  the  lower  animals,  is  well  devel- 
oped and  functions  actively.  Its  frequent 
inflammation  is  also  a  good  example  of  the 
fact  that  such  imperfect  vestigial  organs 
are  very  prone  to  become  diseased  and 


57 


58  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

often  require  the  surgeon's  skill  to  avert 
disaster.  The  only  really  safe  place  for  the 
appendix  is  in  the  surgeon's  collection  of 
trophies. 

As  Prof.  Walter  (loc,  cit.)  happily  says 
of  the  appendix  and  the  many  other  similar 
vestiges  from  our  animal  ancestors: 
"These  and  scores  of  similar  characters, 
which,  taken  together,  make  man  in  the 
eyes  of  the  comparative  anatomist  a  veri- 
table old  curiosity-shop  of  ancestral  relics, 
are  the  last  traces  of  characters  which 
formerly  had  a  significance  in  some  of 
man's  forbears.  Having  lost  their  useful- 
ness, these  structures  still  hang  on  to  the 
anatomical  household  as  pensioners.  They 
have  not  been  recalled  from  the  past,  but 
have  always  been  with  us,  although  of 
diminishing  importance." 


VIII. 
IDENTICAL  DISEASES 

VIII.  The  Evidence  from  the  Diseases 
of  Man  and  Animals.  So  complete  is  the 
fundamental  identity  of  a  number  of  these 
diseases  that  we  can  solve  problems  in 
human  disease  by  a  study  of  the  same  dis- 
ease in  animals. 

Inflammation  is  common  to  most 
diseases.  The  major  part  of  our  knowl- 
edge of  this  process  has  been  derived  from 
study  of  inflammation  in  the  web  of  the 
frog's  foot.  There  we  can  catch  the  initial 
steps  of  the  process,  information  which  it 
is  absolutely  impossible  to  obtain  in  man's 
body.  At  human  post-mortem  examina- 
tions, we  can  obtain  by  microscopical  and 
chemical  examination  only  the  end  results, 

59 


60  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

not  the  beginnings  of  disease.  Moreover, 
frequently  complications  have  occurred 
during  the  course  of  the  disease  which 
have  obscured  or  even  destroyed  the 
evidences  of  the  original  disease.  In  ani- 
mals, we  can  painlessly  end  their  lives  by 
an  anesthetic  at  any  desired  period  of 
the  disease  and  learn  step  by  step  what 
has  occurred. 

Among  the  diseases  common  to  man  and 
animals,  I  may  mention  inflammation  of 
almost  all  the  tissues  and  organs  of  the 
body,  such  as  inflammation  of  bones  and 
joints,  etc.,  abscesses,  anthrax,  glanders, 
hydrophobia,  tumors,  tuberculosis,  can- 
cer, and  tetanus.  I  can  only  say  a  few 
words  about  the  last  three. 

After  Koch  discovered  the  bacillus  of 
tuberculosis  in  1882,  we  learned  in  a  few 
years  both  by  clinical  experience  in  man, 


IDENTICAL  DISEASES  61 

and  by  many  experiments  on  animals, 
more  about  this  disease  than  in  all  the  years 
since  its  first  recognition.  In  my  boy- 
hood and  even  young  manhood,  every 
patient  was  regarded  as  doomed  the  mo- 
ment that  the  diagnosis  of  "consumption" 
was  made.  Hope  was  practically  aban- 
doned. Now,  if  diagnosed  early,  it  is  very 
curable.  Moreover  we  took  no  precautions 
to  prevent  the  disease  from  spread- 
ing, we  did  not  know  that  it  was  contag- 
ious. No  means  were  taken  to  prevent 
coughing  and  spitting.  We  did  not  know 
how  to  make  an  early  diagnosis  by  finding 
the  tubercle  bacilli  in  the  sputum.  These 
precautions  and  an  early  diagnosis  when 
the  disease  is  in  its  most  curable  stage,  have 
come  very  largely  from  our  studies  of  the 
disease  in  animals. 

Cancer  is  the  most  baffling  disease  that 


62  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

we  have  to  deal  with  for  the  reason  that 
its  cause  is  unknown  and  we  are  fighting 
it  to  a  large  extent  in  the  dark.  It  exists 
among  animals  as  well  as  man.  I  have 
seen  and  handled  at  the  Cancer  Institute 
on  the  Embankment  in  London,  many 
mice  with  cancer  as  large  as  their  own  bod- 
ies, or  even  larger.  I  could  not  see  that 
they  were  "suffering"  from  cancer,  for 
they  were  running  about  in  the  liveliest 
fashion  and  seeming  to  be  having  "the 
time  of  their  lives." 

Cancer  is  being  attacked  from  the  clin- 
ical, the  microscopical,  the  chemical,  the 
experimental,  the  biological  and  the  sur- 
gical side.  That  we  shall  discover  the 
cause  is  absolutely  certain.  Any  day  the 
good  news  may  come.  Experiments  on 
animals  have  given  us  a  deal  of  knowledge 
about  it.     We  are  gradually  closing  in  on 


IDENTICAL  DISEASES  63 

this  enemy  of  man  and  animals,  and  will 
assuredly  slay  it.^ 

Tetanus  or  lock-jaw  is  another  disease 
common  both  to  animals  and  man.  The 
germ  is  found  in  soil  roamed  over  by  ani- 
mals, for  the  usual  home  of  the  tetanus 
bacillus  is  in  the  intestines  of  horses  and 

^  May  I  digress  for  a  moment  to  say  that  the  only 
hope  of  cure  at  present  lies  in  an  early  and  complete 
extirpation  of  all  the  disease.  Let  me  impress  upon 
every  reader  of  these  lines  a  few  facts.  The  absence 
of  pain  is  no  indication  that  the  disease  is  harmless. 
Cancer  is  almost  never  painful  in  the  beginning.  The 
first  evidence  of  the  disease  is  usually  a  lump  which 
ought  not  to  be  there.  The  moment  that  such  a  lump 
is  discovered,  instantly  the  best  up-to-date  surgeon 
available  should  be  consulted,  and  if  his  judgement  ap- 
proves, an  immediate  wide  and  thorough  removal  should 
be  done. 

Cancer  has  become  a  national  menace.  It  is  increasing 
faster  than  the  population  is  increasing.  If  these  words 
will  carry  weight  and  result  in  prompt  action  by  any 
of  my  readers  this  digression  will  be  amply  justified,  for 
a  very  large  percentage  of  cancers  can  be  permanently 
cured  by  an  early  and  complete  surgical  operation. 
I  know  of  no  other  means  of  cure  at  present.  When  we 
learn  the  cause,  then  I  expect  the  happy  day  will 
dawn  when  we  will  be  able  to  prevent  or  to  cure 
cancer  without  operation. 


64  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

cattle.  The  bacilli  and  the  animals  live 
very  happily  and  comfortably  together, 
so  long  as  the  bacilli  remains  in  the  intes- 
tine, but,  as  was  often  shown  in  the  late 
war,  if  a  horse  received  a  wound  and 
tetanus  bacilli  from  the  soil  got  into  the 
tissues  and  infected  the  wound,  the  horse 
died  of  tetanus,  precisely  as  a  man  would. 
By  experiments  in  animals  we  have  now 
discovered  an  antitoxin  which  will  prevent 
this  horribly  painful  disease,  provided  it  is 
used  early  enough.  The  prevention  of 
tetanus  was  one  of  the  great  triumphs  of 
the  Great  War. 


IX. 
CELLULAR  ORIGIlSr  OF  LIFE 

IX.  Man,  animals  and  plants  all  orig- 
inate from  a  one-celled  ovum  {^gg 
or  seed).  One  of  the  most  remarkable 
things  in  the  world  is  a  human  ovum. 
From  a  single  cell  when  fertilized,  there 
develop  myriads  and  myriads  of  cells. 
These  cells  quickly  begin  to  differentiate 
into  the  various  tissues  and  organs  of  the 
body:  bone,  muscle,  nerve;  heart,  liver, 
kidney;  or  into  those  still  more  wonder- 
fully complex  organs,  the  eye,  the  ear,  and 
the  brain.  Moreover,  the  later  exact  color 
of  the  eyes,  of  the  skin — white,  black, 
brown,  etc., — along  with  other  racial  quali- 
ties of  body  and  mind,  straight  or  curly 
hair,  Grecian,  Roman,  Jewish,  Negro 
nose ;  the  oblique,  Asiatic  eyes,  the  longer 

5  65 


66  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

arms  and  projecting  heel  of  the  negro,  the 
high  cheek-bone  of  the  American  Indian. 
There  are  always  symmetrical  pairs  of 
eyes,  ears,  nostrils,  arms,  legs,  brain  (in 
right  and  left  hemispheres)  Imigs,  kid- 
neys, ribs,  etc.,  but  only  one  liver,  stom- 
ach, pancreas,  spleen,  etc.  "Why,  in  the 
embryo,  should  the  little  bud  which  is  to 
become  a  human  arm  always  develop  at 
exactly  the  right  place  and  not  grow  out 
on  the  front  of  the  chest  or  on  the  back 
nearer  the  spine?  *  *  *  Why  should  the  two 
arms  (and  the  two  legs)  always  grow  to 
virtually  the  same  length?  Why  should 
the  human  body  grow  for  about  twenty 
years  and  then  stop  growing?"  The  only 
answer  is  that  in  that  tiny  primordial  cell 
were  enshrined  all  the  orderly  sequences 
and  potencies  of  human  development. 

Still  more  subtle  is  the  reproduction  in 
varying  degrees  of  the  mental  and  moral. 


CELLULAR  ORIGIN  OF  LIFE         67 

as  well  as  the  physical  traits  of  both  the 
parents. 

What  enormous  potentialities  are  en- 
wrapped in  that  tiny  single  cell ! 

What  an  enlightening  fact  it  is  that  this 
origin  from  a  single  cell  extends  from  man 
down  to  the  very  worm.  You  recall  how 
Pasteur  saved  the  silk  industry  of  France 
from  ruin  by  discovering  in  the  eggs  of  the 
silk- worm  the  cause  of  the  deadly  pebrine, 
and  that  he  could  easily  distinguish  be- 
tween the  diseased  and  the  healthy  eggs. 
Even  as  low  a  form  of  life  as  the  sponges 
have  a  similar  origin. 

All  many-celled  animals  and  plants  arise 
each  from  one  fertilized  ovum.  In  plants 
we  call  them  seeds,  and  in  Holy  Writ  the 
promise  was  to  Abraham  and  his  "seed/* 
making  "seed"  and  ''egg''  synonymous 
philologically  as  they  are  physiologically. 

This  is  the  message  of  all  Nature — like 


68  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

the  rocks,  another  of  God's  works — pro- 
gressive development  from  the  lowest  to 
to  the  highest  form  of  life,  from  a  single 
cell  to  the  complete  man,  from  the  un- 
knowing baby  to  the  wonderful  mind  of 
the  sage. 

Let  me  conclude  this  section  by  a  quota- 
tion from  the  reply  of  Professor  Conklin, 
one  of  our  most  eminent  scientists,  to  Mr. 
Bryan,  one  of  our  most  eminent  orators. 

"It  is  a  curious  fact  that  many  persons, 
who  are  seriously  disturbed  by  scientific 
teachings  as  to  evolution  or  gradual  devel- 
opment of  the  human  race,  accept  with 
equanimity  the  universal  observation  as  to 
the  development  of  the  human  individual 
— ^mind  as  well  as  body — from  an  egg. 
The  animal  ancestry  of  the  race  should  be 
no  more  disturbing  to  philosophical  and 
religious  beliefs  than  the  germinal  origin 
of  the  individual,  and  yet  the  latter  is  a 


CELLULAR  ORIGIN  OP  LIFE         69 

fact  of  universal  observation  which  cannot 
be  relegated  to  the  domain  of  theory  and 
which  cannot  be  successfully  denied.  If 
we  admit  the  fact  of  the  development  of 
the  entire  individual  from  an  egg,  surely 
it  matters  little  to  our  religious  beliefs  to 
admit  the  development  or  evolution  of  the 
race  from  some  animal  ancestor,  for  who 
will  maintain  that  a  germ  cell  is  more  com- 
plex, more  perfect,  or  more  intelligent  than 
an  ape?  If  the  evolution  of  a  species  is 
an  atheistic  theory,  as  some  persons  assert, 
so  is  the  development  of  an  individual,  for 
natural  development  involves  identically 
the  same  principles  as  does  evolution.  If 
one  concedes  the  fact  of  individual  devel- 
opment without  supernatural  interference, 
one  might  as  well  concede  the  fact  of 
organic  evolution  without  supernatural 
creation,  so  far  at  least  as  its  effects  on 
theology  are  concerned." 


EMBRYONIC  DEFORMITIES 

X.  Let  us  turn  to  the  very  significant 
evidence  of  our  animal  origin  in  the  embry- 
onic development  of  man.  I  have  time  to 
note  but  a  single,  though  very  enlighten- 
ing instance. 

During  the  pre-natal  development  in 
man,  between  the  right  and  left  upper  jaw 
bones  is  a  triangular  bone,  which  carries 
the  four  upper  incisor  or  "front  teeth."  In 
sheep  and  some  other  animals,  this  bone 
always  persists  as  a  separate  bone,  called 
the  premaxillary  bone.  At  birth,  and 
afterwards,  in  the  human  skull,  there  is 
normally  no  such  bone,  because  it  has 
become  fused  on  each  side  with  the  cor- 
responding upper  jaw  bone.  Now  note  a 
curious  defective  development  in  human 


71 


72  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

fetal  life.  Sometimes  this  premaxillary 
bone  in  the  human  embryo  fails  to  unite 
with  the  upper  jaw  bone  on  the  right  or 
the  left  side,  and  then  we  have  what  you  all 
know  as  a  "cleft  palate."  If  not  only  the 
bones  fail  to  fuse  together,  but  this  fail- 
ure extends  also  to  the  upper  lip,  we  have 
a  "hare  lip,"  so  called  because  of  the 
normal  notch  in  the  hare's  upper  lip.  We 
see  in  some  cases  only  a  cleft  palate,  in 
others  only  a  hare  lip,  in  still  others,  both 
hare  lip  and  cleft  palate.  This  com- 
bined hare  lip  and  cleft  palate  sometimes 
exists  in  both  sides.  This  last  is  a  pitiable 
deformity,  which,  however,  surgery  can 
sometimes  remedy.  Ordinary  hare  lip  or 
cleft  palate  are  very  amenable  to  surgical 
repair. 

When  there  is  such  a  deformity,  it  never 
occurs  in  the  middle  line  or  any  indiffer- 
ent place  here  or  there,  but  invariably  on 


EMBRYONIC  DEFORMITIES  73 

the  right  or  the  left  side  and  correspond- 
ing exactly  to  the  site  of  the  failure  of  this 
premaxillary  hone  to  unite  with  the 
upper  jaw. 

Is  not  such  an  exact  correspondence  be- 
tween the  anatomy  and  development  of  the 
sheep  and  of  the  child  most  significant  of 
the  ancestry  of  the  human  body? 


XI, 

EVIDENCE  FROM  THE  STUDY 
OF  HEREDITY 

XI.  The  evidence  from  the  study  of 
heredity.  The  wonderful  and  exact  exper- 
iments on  plants  by  an  Austrian  monk — 
Mendel — only  discovered  in  an  obscure 
local  scientific  journal,  50  years  after  their 
publication,  gave  a  new  impetus  to  the 
study  of  heredity.  These  phenomena  have 
been  studied  in  horses,  dogs,  cattle,  sheep, 
fowls,  mice,  rabbits,  etc.,  and  in  various 
insects,  as  well  as  in  plants. 

Scores  of  scientists,  European  and 
American,  have  rewritten  and  are  still  de- 
veloping the  science  of  genetics  and  apply- 
ing the  results  of  their  investigations  to 
man  himself.     The  same  laws  relating  to 

75 


76  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

heredity  hold  good  from  human  parent  to 
child  and  later  generations  in  man,  in  ani- 
mal and  plant/ 

^  For   the   general    reader,    Prof.    "Walter's    Genetics 
(Macmillan)  is  an  excellent  text-book. 


XII. 
INFLUENCE  OF  EMOTIONS 

XII.  Even  the  normal  physiological 
intense  emotions  of  man  and  animals  are 
practically  identical. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  of  Darwin's 
many  books  is  that  on  the  "Expression  of 
the  Emotions  in  Man  and  Animals." 
Their  wonderful  similarity  is  most  strik- 
ing. In  Harper's  Magazine  for  August, 
1922,  Dr.  Walter  B.  Cannon,  the  distin- 
guished professor  of  physiology  in  the 
Harvard  Medical  School,  has  a  most  inter- 
esting and  instructive  article  on  "What 
Strong  Emotions  Do  to  Us."  This  paper 
embodies  some  of  the  latest  discoveries  in 
the  identity  of  the  effect  of  strong  emo- 
tions in  animals  and  man. 

Cannon  fully  confirms  the  observations 

77 


78  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

of  Darwin,  and  indeed  who  cannot  who 
has  seen  a  dog  and  dog  or  dog  and  cat-fight 
in  their  initial  stages : — the  aggressive  atti- 
tude, the  erection  of  the  hair,  the  snarling 
and  uncovering  of  the  canine  (eye)  teeth. 
In  man,  the  same  attitude,  the  clenched 
fists,  the  deep  breathing,  the  tense  flapping 
of  the  sides  of  the  nostrils,  the  uncovering 
of  the  eye  teeth,  all  show  the  similar  effects 
of  intense  emotion.  Moreover  all  these 
modes  of  physical  expression  of  mental 
states  do  not  have  to  be  learned,  they  are 
inborn,  i,e.,  are  a  part  of  our  animal  inher- 
itance. The  illustrations  in  Darwin's 
book  admirably  depict  these  effects  of 
emotion. 

By  the  X-ray,  we  can  actually  follow  the 
process  of  digestion  in  a  cat  or  other  small 
animal,  can  see  the  stomach  churning  the 
food  around,  and  then  can  follow  its  prog- 
ress in  the  bowel,  which  by  its  waves  of 


INFLUENCE  OF  EMOTIONS  79 

muscular  contraction  propels  the  food 
along  the  alimentary  canal.  If,  during 
digestion,  a  cat  in  a  cage  is  greatly  excited 
(by  a  dog  fiercely  barking  at  it,  but  unable 
to  reach  it) ,  all  these  processes  stop.  "The 
churning  stomach  becomes  a  flabby  inac- 
tive sac,  the  kneading  intestines  cease  their 
motions,  and  the  digestive  glands  no 
longer  secrete  the  juices  necessary  to  pre- 
pare the  food  for  absorption."  These  same 
effects  of  intense  emotion  on  digestion 
have  been  proved  to  be  true  also  in  man. 
An  accompaniment  of  this  cessation 
of  digestion  is  that  far  less  blood  is  sent  to 
the  entire  alimentary  canal,  twenty-five 
feet  in  length.  This  blood  is  diverted  from 
the  alimentary  canal  to  the  brain,  the  heart, 
the  lungs  and  the  muscles.  These  organs 
are  now  all  prepared  for  fight  or  flight  by 
reason  of  this  greater  blood  supply.  The 
brain  is  more  active,  the  heart  beats  faster, 


80  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

respiration  is  deeper  and  faster  to  supply 
the  blood  with  more  oxygen.  If  the  flight 
or  fight  ensues,  there  is  a  burning  up  of 
tissue  and  the  production  of  waste  prod- 
ucts, especially  water  and  carbon  dioxid 
(carbonic  acid) .  The  amount  of  the  car- 
bon dioxid  may  be  even  six  times  greater 
than  the  normal. 

All  this  wide-spread  activity  demands  a 
supply  of  energy.  This  is  found  in  the 
sugar  in  the  blood  produced  by  the  liver. 
This  sugar  may  be  so  greatly  increased  as 
to  appear  in  the  urine.  "Half  the  mem- 
bers of  a  foot-ball  squad  at  the  time  of  the 
supreme  contest  *  *  *  were  found  to  have 
such  an  abundance  of  sugar  as  a  result  of 
their  emotional  tension."  (Cannon.) 

But  this  story  is  not  yet  complete. 
Above  the  kidney  are  two  small  adrenal 
glands.  Their  secretion  is  called  adrenin 
or    adrenalin.      These    two    glands    are 


INFLUENCE  OF  EMOTIONS  81 

stimulated  to  great  activity  by  strong  emo- 
tion and  pour  their  secretion  into  the  blood 
in  a  larger  quantity  than  normal.  This 
secretion  cooperates  with  the  nerves  to  put 
a  stop  to  all  the  processes  of  digestion,  and 
so  drives  the  blood  from  the  long  alimen- 
tary canal,  and  sends  it  to  the  heart,  brain, 
lungs  and  muscles.  Moreover,  a  small  dose 
of  adrenin  quickly  restores  activity  to  tired 
muscles.  Everything  therefore  conspires 
to  enable  the  man  or  the  animal  to  flee 
or  to  fight. 

The  adrenin  also  lessens  the  loss  of  blood 
in  case  of  wounds  inflicted  in  a  possible 
fight,  for  it  causes  the  blood  to  clot  far 
more  quickly  than  is  normal.  This  clotting 
more  quickly  occludes  the  wound  of  any 
blood  vessel  which  may  be  torn  in  a  fight. 
Intense  emotion  if  it  finds  no  expression  in 
strenuous  muscular  activity,  still  summons 
its  forces  for  combat.  "Careful  observation 

6 


82  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

of  students  subjected  to  severe  examina- 
tions," says  Cannon,  "has  proved  that  they 
not  infrequently  have  so  large  an  amount 
of  sugar  set  free  in  the  blood  that  it  escapes 
through  the  kidneys ;  the  heart  beats  rapid- 
ly; the  blood  pressure  is  elevated;  *  *  * 
probably  all  of  the  organic  adjustments 
preparatory  to  a  fight  or  a  flight  are 
fully  elaborated." 

Read  the  whole  of  Cannon's  paper  of 
which  I  have  given  the  merest  outline,  and 
also  read  Darwin's  book.  The  result  will  be 
that  you  will  surely  conclude  that  man, 
himself,  dog  and  cat,  lion  and  leopard,  are 
all  different  forms  of  living  beings,  who 
mobilize  their  physical  and  mental  forces 
after  the  same  fashion  and  that  they  must 
have  had  a  common,  far-away  ancestor. 

So  identical  are  many  of  the  most  im- 
portant physiological  and  pathological 
{i.e.  the  normal  and  the  diseased)   pro- 


INFLUENCE  OF  EMOTIONS  83 

cesses  in  man  and  animals  that  the  physiol- 
ogist and  the  pathologist  constantly  study 
them  in  animals  and  find  that  their  conclu- 
sions drawn  from  these  experiments  on 
animals  are  entirely  true  in  their  applica- 
tions to  man.  Without  such  experiments 
we  should  be  ignorant  of  these  processes  in 
health  and  disease  and  go  stumbling 
along  in  our  effort  to  prevent  and  to  cure 
disease.  These  experiments  are  always 
done  under  an  anesthetic  excepting  a  very 
small  percentage  (less  than  1%).  In 
such  cases  a  special  permit  for  the  Director 
of  the  Laboratory — a  responsible  member 
of  the  Faculty — is  given  if  the  Director 
approves  of  the  subject  and  the  method  of 
the  research.  Personally,  in  over  sixty 
years  I  have  never  seen  or  known  of  a 
single  instance. 


XIII. 
EVIDENCE  FROM  FOSSIL  MAN 

XIII.  There  have  been  discovered 
several  grades  of  actual  prehistoric  men. 
Their  skeletons  or  skulls,  their  flint  instru- 
ments, and  the  remains  of  their  fires  are 
evidences  of  the  grade  of  their  several  civil- 
izations. This  chain  of  human  ancestors 
was  unknown  to  Darwin,  for  nearly  all 
of  them  have  been  discovered  since 
his  death. 

I  have  myself  seen  in  the  natural  cav- 
erns of  southern  France  the  extraordinary 
and  convincing  evidences  of  the  assured 
existence  of  our  immediate  ancestors,  the 
Cro-Magnon  man,  who  lived  about  25,000 
years  ago.  There  are  others  still  more 
remarkable  in  northern  Spain.  There  are 
to  be  seen  the  work  of  the  first  painters 

85 


86  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

and  the  earliest  sculptors,  prehistoric  Sar- 
gents  and  Rodins  of  remarkable  skill. 

Far  from  the  entrance  of  the  caves,  the 
utter  darkness  shows  that  a  means  for  pro- 
ducing artificial  light  had  been  devised. 
On  the  walls  and  sometimes  the  roof  in 
red,  white  and  black  colors,  are  depicted 
and  instantly  recognized  the  outlines  of  the 
(horse,  the  bison,  the  mammoth  and  other 
animals.  In  one  place  there  is  a  spirited 
combat  between  two  reindeer  stags  about 
to  lock  horns.  There  are  also  a  very  few 
figures  in  relief  and  in  one  instance  a  de- 
tached statuette. 

Before  the  Cro-Magnon  man  came  the 
Neanderthal  man,  "whom  we  know  all 
about,  his  frame,  his  head-form,  his  indus- 
tries, his  ceremonial  burial  of  the  dead,"  as 
Dr.  Henry  Fairfield  Osbom  has  pointed 
out.  Before  him  was  the  Piltdown  man; 
before  him  the  Heidelberg  man;  still  ear- 
lier, in  Java,  the  Trinil  man.  Even  in 
Rhodesia    (Africa)    the  remains  of  one 


EVIDENCE  FROM  FOSSIL  MAN       87 

early  man  have  been  discovered.  Still 
further  back  in  geologic  time  was  the  Fox- 
hall  man — all  named  from  the  localities  in 
which  their  remains  were  found.  This 
earliest  Foxhall  man  lived  in  England  be- 
fore the  Great  Ice  Age,  about  500,000 
years  ago. 

The  differences  between  the  highest 
anthropoid  apes  and  the  lowest  man  grad- 
ually grow  less  and  less  the  further  we 
trace  them  backwards.  We  must  clearly 
understand  that  no  existing  species  of  an- 
thropoid apes  could  have  been  our  ances- 
tors. The  latter  and  we  are  collateral  des- 
cendants from  ape-like  species  living  far, 
far  back  in  geologic  time ;  before,  and  prob- 
ably long  before  the  Great  Ice  Age.  The 
earth  is  very  big,  the  various  excavations 
during  only  half  a  century  have  covered 
only  a  very  minute  part  of  its  surface. 
Every  discovery  has  but  confirmed  the 
wonderful  story  of  the  ascent  of  man. 


XIV. 
THE  MESSAGE  OF  PLANTS 

XIV.  Since  I  delivered  this  address,  the 
Gold  Medal  of  the  British  Medical  Asso- 
ciation, "for  distinguished  service"  was 
presented  to  Sir  Clifford  Allbutt,  Regius 
Professor  of  Medicine  in  Cambridge, 
England,  on  July  25,  1922.  One  of  the 
reasons  given  for  its  being  conferred  upon 
him  was  that  he  had  "pleaded  for  a  broader 
outlook  and  demanded  that  our  inquiries 
into  the  nature  and  causes  of  disease 
should  not  be  limited  to  man,  nor  even  to 
the  animal  kingdom,  but  should  be  ex- 
tended to  plants  which  present,  in  a  simp- 
ler form,  problems  not  dissimilar." 

Dr.  Erwin  F.  Smith,  of  the  Department 
of  Plant  Pathology  in  Washington,  be- 
tween 1905  and  1914,  issued  three  volumes 


89 


90  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

on  Diseases  of  Plants  caused  by  Bacteria. 
He  also  investigated  with  especial  care  a 
disease  in  plants  very  analogous  to  can- 
cer in  human  beings  and  animals,  thus 
showing  again  the  solidarity  of  life  even 
in  the  lower  realm  of  plants. 

Again,  Sir  Jagadis  Chandra  Bose, 
Founder  and  Director  of  the  Bose  Re- 
search Institute  in  Calcutta,  is  a  gifted 
Hindu  who  has  devoted  his  life  to  scien- 
tific researches  on  plant-life.  These 
researches  have  won  for  him  the  coveted 
distinction  of  Fellowship  in  the  Royal 
Society  of  Great  Britain. 

Some  years  ago  I  saw  him  demonstrate 
the  extraordinary  effect  of  drugs  on 
plants,  such  as  poisoning  them  by  drugs 
which  are  poisonous  to  man  and  animals. 
Plants  were  put  to  sleep  with  ether  and 
chloroform.  If  enough  is  given,  they  are 
killed  just  as  a  man  is  killed.    If  only  a 


THE  MESSAGE  OF  PLANTS  91 

moderate  dose  is  given,  the  plant  passes 
into  a  state  of  greatly  lessened  activity, 
which  may  be  well  called  sleep.  When  the 
anesthetic  is  withdrawn,  the  plant  grad- 
ually wakens  and  returns  to  its  normal 
activity,  just  as  a  man  does. 

He  demonstrated  also  that  there  were 
impulses  very  analogous  to  the  nervous 
currents  in  the  human  body.  All  the  ac- 
tivities of  plants  gradually  decline  to  their 
minimum  toward  the  end  of  the  night  and 
resume  their  activity  with  the  oncoming 
daylight.  Heat  accelerates  these  reac- 
tions and  cold  retards  them,  as  in  man. 

His  most  recent  work  is  about  to  be 
published  in  a  book  entitled  Physiology  of 
the  Ascent  of  Sap.  (Longmans,  London) 
A  notice  of  this  forthcoming  book^  gives 
a  resume  of  some  more  recent  discoveries 
which  have  been  made  possible  by  two 

^Littell's    Living    Age,    August    26,    1922,    p.    624. 


92  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

instriunents  devised  by  him.  The  first  is 
called  the  "magnetic  crescograph,"  by 
which  he  "obtains  a  magnification  from  ten 
to  one  hundred  million  times."  The 
second  is  an  electric  probe  by  which  he 
reaches  layer  after  layer  of  a  plant  or  tree 
from  the  surface  inward. 

He  has  been  able  to  show  that  the  indi- 
vidual cells  in  the  active  layer  of  the  cortex 
expand  and  contract  alternately  at  inter- 
vals of  about  fourteen  seconds  in  regular 
sequence  from,  below  upward,  and  so  estab- 
lish a  circulation  of  the  sap  which'  in 
favorable  circumstances,  may  move  at  the 
rate  of  over  one  hundred  feet  an  hour. 
These  scattered  but  correlated  cells,  in 
their  harmonious,  aggregate  action,  fulfil 
the  function  of  an  animal  heart. 

He  is  justified  in  concluding  that, 
"  There  is,  indeed,  no  characteristic  action 
in  the  highest  animal  that  has  not  been 


THE  MESSAGE  OF  PLANTS  93 

foreshadowed  in  the  simpler  life  of  the 
plant.  Hence,  investigations  of  vegetable 
life  have  solved  many  of  the  perplexing 
problems  in  animal  life." 

One  can  even  descend  still  further  down 
in  the  scale  to  the  bacteria,  that  is,  germs 
visible  only  by  the  microscope.  As  Welch, 
of  the  Johns  Hopkins,  points  out,  "The 
gentle  killing  of  certain  bacteria  by  chloro- 
form enables  us  to  detect  in  their  bodies 
toxic  [poisonous]  substances  which  are  de- 
stroyed by  more  violent  modes  of  death." 


XV. 

EVOLUTION  OF  RACIAL 
CULTURE  AND  CIVILIZATION 

XV.  So  far  we  have  dealt  especially 
with  the  evolution  of  man's  physical  body. 
Professor  James  K.  Breasted  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Chicago  in  his  Ancient  Times, 
(Ginn  and  Co.)  and  later  in  his  brilUant 
Hale  Lectures  before  the  National  Acad- 
emy of  Sciences  {The  Scientific  Monthly, 
1919  and  1920)  approaches  man's  evolu- 
tion from  a  wholly  different  angle.    He 
shows  that  archeological  and  prehistoric 
studies  have  clearly  demonstrated  a  similar 
progressive  evolution  of  culture  and  civ- 
ilization of  the  whole  Human  Race  out 
of  a  geological  background  of  prehistoric 
savagery.     He  summons  to  his  aid  a  mass 
of  details  and  of  illustrations  which  are 

95 


96  ,GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

most  convincing.  Read  the  originals.  I 
cannot  condense  two  volumes  into  one 
paragraph. 

Man's  ascent,  from  an  animal  of  low 
intelligence  seems  to  me  to  be  absolutely- 
proved  by  the  many  phenomena  which  re- 
veal identical  organs  and  identical  physio- 
logical processes  in  the  animal  and  the 
human  body,  only  a  few  of  which,  chosen 
out  of  a  very  great  number,  I  have 
described.  So  too,  man's  vanishing  organs 
and  deformities  are  allied  to  what  is  nor- 
mal in  some  of  the  lower  animals. 
This  close  relation  is  confirmed  by 
the  discovery  of  the  remains  of  a 
number  of  prehistoric  men,  as  is  now 
definitely  proved.  The  same  progress 
appears  in  the  human  race  as  a  whole.  The 
Ascent  of  Man,  in  perfectly  orderly  se- 
quence, is  far  more  probable  than  that  evo- 
lution progressed  up  to  the  anthropoid 


CULTURE  AND  CIVILIZATION        97 

apes  and  stopped  there,  and  that  God  then 
made  a  man  by  a  separate,  special  creative 
act,  yet — mirahile  dictu — with  all  these 
minute  and  exact  correspondences  of  simi- 
lar structures  and  functions  in  animals! 
Even  microscopically,  the  various  struct- 
ures in  man  and  animals  are  practically 
identical.  The  tiny  muscles  moving  the 
wings  of  insects,  such  as  the  fly  and  the 
mosquito,  resemble  the  muscles  of  man 
microscopically. 

If  man  was  a  special  creation,  the 
Almighty  was  not  limited  to  the  lowliest 
form  of  matter — the  "dust  of  the  ground" 
— as  material  for  the  human  body.  He 
could  have  created  a  nobler,  a  more  subtile, 
a  more  puissant  and  exalted  stuff  out  of 
which  to  fashion  man.  The  plan  and 
structure  and  function  of  man's  body 
would  then  supposedly  have  differed  toto 
coelo  from  man's  present  body.  Probably 


98  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

it  would  have  been  free  from  the  defects 
and  deformities  inherent  to  our  animal 
body,  and  free  from  the  diseases  which  it 
shares  with  animals. 

But  no!  God  deliberately  made  man 
out  of  the  same  stuff  as  the  animals,  and, 
as  I  have  shown,  on  the  same  plan  as  ani- 
mals. Body  wise,  man  is  an  animal,  but, 
thanks  be  to  God,  his  destiny  is  not  the 
same  as  that  of  the  beasts  that  perish.  To 
develop  great  men,  such  as  Aristotle, 
Plato,  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Washington, 
Lincoln,  and  then  by  death  to  quench  them 
in  utter  oblivion,  would  be  unworthy  of 
Omnipotence.  To  my  mind,  it  is  simply 
an  impossible  conclusion.  Man's  soul 
mtist  be  immortal. 

Human  life  is  the  gradual  unfolding  of 
a  majestic  drama,  covering  aeons  of  time. 
In  its  dawn  we  see  man  groping  his  way 
towards  the  light;  then  slowly,  but  surely 


CULTURE  AND  CIVILIZATION        99 

developing  his  intellectual  life ;  and  finally 
— how  or  when  we  know  not  now,  but 
doubtless  we  shall  know  in  the  future,  in 
the  immortal  life — the  engrafting  by  the 
Creator  upon  his  bodily  life  of  a  moral  and 
spii'itual  life,  a  soul  with  a  desire  to  wor- 
ship, a  faculty  of  adoration  and  of  com- 
munion with  liis  Heavenly  Father.  This 
wondrous  love  of  God  for  Man  and 
the  final,  lofty  destiny  of  the  Human  Race 
— ^this  is  to  me  tlie  most  impressive,  the 
most  inspiring  thought  of  all  the  ages. 

The  Poet  is  often  the  best  interpreter 
of  Truth.  His  vision  is  broader  and  more 
penetrating  than  the  more  prosaic  wisdom 
of  the  Philosopher  or  the  knowledge  of  the 
Scientist.  Thus,  years  ago,  sang  the  Poet 
Laureate — 

"  Flower  in  the  crannied  wall, 
I  pluck  you  out  of  the  crannies, 
I  hold  you  here,  root  and  all  in  my  hand. 


100  GOD  AND  EVOLUTION 

Little  flower — but  if  I  could  understand 
What  you  are,  root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 
I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is." 

And  yet  again,  with  a  reverence  which 
we  do  well  to  imitate — 
"  More  things  are  wrought  by  prayer 

Than  this  world  dreams  of 

For  what  are  men  better  than  sheep  or 

goats 
That  nourish  a  blind  life  within  the 

brain — 
If,  knowing  God,  they  hft  not  hands  of 

prayer 
Both  for  themselves  and  those  that  call 

them  friends? 
For  so  the  whole  round  Earth  is  every 

way 
Bound  by  gold  chains  about  the  feet  of 

God." 

(Morted'  Arthur.) 


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